Fictional Fans

Yeah, I didn't know about the bookmarking external works at the time (whoever I asked didn't mention that possibility), but I think I would've been dissatisfied with that, now that I can do what I really want. And I can write queries that will pull combinations of all sorts of criteria. For instance, I can write a query to pull the Matrix fics which have Neo/Trinity as a major ship but which do NOT have angst, and which are over 1k. That's 4 things I'm setting in that example query - fandom, major ship, excluding a theme, and limiting by wordcount. I can restrict by multiple themes at a time, too. That kind of granularity you can't get with anything other than a database. Probably overkill for most people, but I *love* that kind of control over information, to be able to demand a specific selection and get it. The cool thing is it means that if there's someone who has some specific DNWs they need to control for, I can do that and present them with an entire list they can read with no problems.

Aww, I know the "why did I wait so long" feeling. In my case, most of the fandoms I've gotten into were either fairly small even in their heyday, or were too late for Yahoo Groups to have much on them (and yet the fandom is dead now). Alas!

Hey, when we get to the tagging, we can definitely use help by people who know those fandoms! Every last group has to be tagged *before* they get sorted and uploaded, so if you're at all interested, please consider joining the Discord so you'll be alerted when tagging starts. (Though if you don't do Discord, you can always subscribe to my DW as I'll definitely post there, or follow the Yahoo-Geddon Tumblr.) We need so much fandom knowledge (and languages, too), as I'm seeing tons of groups for fandoms I'd never heard of before. It'll go far faster if we have people who know the fandoms checking over them and tagging. I should have some tabs ready to go in around three months. (Yes, it'll take that long to finish fixing the mojibake in the metadata. *sigh*)

Interesting, I'd never thought of location! I don't think I'd find it that useful, but I might create some themes that I only use with specific fandoms to tag for stuff like that. Like, LOTR tends to be pretty location-driven depending on which races of characters you focus on. Assuming one sticks with Third Age fics (the other ages are generally Silmfic), there's tons of hobbit fic, elven fic, the human fic is split into Rohan vs. Gondor vs. Dúnedain of the North, generally, and I suppose there's also dwarf fic. And even with the elven stuff, you've got at least three different locations that the fics can be focused on (Rivendell, Lothlórien, and Mirkwood). I'll probably need to add a theme just for each race/location, because they're like a half dozen different fandoms rolled into one, each location feeling so individual that a lot of people tend to enjoy one or two but not the others. (Me, I love the human fic best, then hobbit, elven, and dwarf in that order. But I'll generally try reading anything LOTR as long as it fits some of my other criteria.)